HE WOKE AROUND TEN. Thick snow was cascading past his window, almost obscuring the station opposite. He used the lobby phone to call the two post offices, and was granted audiences with their postmasters late that afternoon. By the time he emerged from the Cafe Weitzke on Lange-Gasse, replete with scrambled eggs, Kashubian mushrooms, and a mocha, he still had five hours to kill.
It had almost stopped snowing, but the sky was still heavy with cloud. As he stood there wondering what to do, there was a sudden swell of music from the loudspeakers which peppered the city. Hitlers New Year speech to the nation, Russell remembered. Danzig wasnt yet part of Germany, but try telling the Nazis that.
Russell sometimes enjoyed listening to Hitler. The mans sheer effrontery was entertaining, and knowing that millions were being taken in by his ludicrous bloodlust gave the whole experience a deplorably thrilling edge. If the Fuhrer told them that gravity was a Jewish trick then millions of Germans would be practicing levitation before the sun set.
But Russell wasnt in the mood. A couple of hours by the sea, he thought. There wouldn't be any loudspeakers on the beach.
Hitler was just being introduced when a tram with a Brosen destination board burrowed out of the Lange- Gasse Gate. Russell took a seat on the right and watched through the window as the tram skirted the Holz-Markt, swung right into Elisabeth-Wall, and passed his hotel at the bottom of the Stadt-Graben.
It was about six kilometers to Brosen. Russell had taken the same ride back in 1935, during his last visit to Danzig. Hed been doing a series of articles on Germans at play, and it had been the middle of summer. The resort had been awash with holiday-makers, and he had gone for a paddle.
Not today. It was as dark as it had been all morning, and as the tram clanged and squealed its way out of the city the sparks from the overhead wires lit up the housefronts on either side of the street. The loudspeakers were still audible, though. As they passed through the outlying suburbs of Langfuhr and Saspe he heard snatches of the familiar voice, and one short passage in which the Fuhrer offered the German people his fulsome congratulations for their wonderful behavior in 1938. He was probably talking about
By the time they reached Brosen the sky had visibly lightened. Russell got off outside the closed casino, where a single loudspeaker was manfully trying to distort the Fuhrers message. Russell listened to the crackle for a few seconds, struck by the notion that he and Hitler were sharing a private moment together. The latter was promising help with the general pacification of the world. Russell wondered how much irony one nation could eat.
He walked down past the boarded-up refreshment stands and pad-locked beach huts to the snow-strewn beach. The previous seasons final water temperature was still legible on the lifeguard hut blackboard, alongside a poster explaining the mysteries of artificial respiration. The men in the poster all wore striped bathing suits and mustaches, like a posse of cartoon Fuhrers.
The sea was gunmetal gray, the sky almost as dark, slate gray with a yellowish tinge. There was no one else in sight.
A couple of kilometers to the east, two beacon lights marked the end of Danzigs channel to the sea, and Russell started walking in that direction. In the distance the lighthouse at the end of the dredged channel flickered into life with each revolution. To the north, a darker line marked the horizon and the outflung arm of the Hela Peninsula. Between the two a smudge of a freighter was inching out across the bay.
The stamp story was made for him, he thought. A story that amused and didn't condemn. A story of stupidity, and rather lovable stupidity at that. He could implant a few ironies just beneath the skin of the text for those who wanted to pick at it, leave enough clues about the real situation for those who already understood it. They would congratulate themselves on reading between the lines, and him for writing between them. And he could sit on his necessary fence for a few more months, until Hitler drove something through it.
Too many metaphors, he told himself. And not nearly enough satisfaction.
He thought about the real Danzig story. Ten years ago hed have written it, and written it well. But not now. Step out of line that far, and the toadies at the Propaganda Ministry would have him deported before he could say Heil Hitler. Hed be saying goodbye to his son, probably for the duration of a war. And probably to Effi as well. Shed told him often enough that shed go to England, or better still America, with him, but he had his doubts whether she meant it, whether shed ever willingly leave her sister, parents, agent, and vast array of friends for life in a new country where no one knew who she was.
He left the path and walked down to the edge of the water, searching for pebbles to skim. He wanted to take Shchepkins offer, he realized. He wasnt sure why, though. He only half-bought the argument that by helping the Soviets hed be hurting the Nazis. If he really wanted to take Hitler on there were more effective ways, but most of them depressingly self-sacrificial. The money would be nice, but the risks would be high. The Nazis still beheaded spies.
He skimmed a flat pebble between two waves. Could he trust Shchepkin? Of course he couldn't. The Soviets might want what they said they wantedno more, no lessbut even if they did, that wouldn't be the end of it. You didn't do a few articles for Stalin, bank the checks, and move on. You were now on a list, one of their people, someone to call up when something else was needed. And once you were on the list, they took refusals badly.
And then there was the attitude of his own country to worry about. He didn't need England now, but the way things were going he soon might, and writing for Stalin would hardly endear him to the Foreign Office. He could end up persona non grata with just about everyone. Why was he even thinking about it?
He knew why. A couple of weeks before Christmas Paul had told him about an exercise that new recruits into the
The idea had appealed to Paul, as it probably did to most boys of eleven. It appealed to Russell too. If he took this journey into the blue he might, conceivably, find his way home again.
He skimmed his last stone, a large one that took a single bounce and sunk. The sparse daylight was receding. The freighter and the Hela Peninsula had both been sucked into gray, and the beam from the lighthouse was sending shivers of reflection back off the darkening sea. He was in the middle of nowhere, lost in space. With ice for feet.
THE TWO POSTMASTERS WERE both short-sighted men in sober suits with small mustaches. The Polish one could hardly wait for the honor of distributing his new stamps. A minion was sent for samples, and came back with King Jagiello and Queen Hedwig. The Polish queen, the postmaster explained, had spurned a German prince in favour of marrying the Lithuanian Jagiello. Their joint kingdom had forced the Prussians to accept the first Polish Corridor and bi-national status for Danzig. Admittedly this had all happened in the early fif-teenth century butand here the postmaster leaned back in his chair with a self-satisfied smilethe contemporary relevance should be obvious. Even to a German.
The German postmaster had his own sample. His stamp featured a beautiful miniature of stout Danzigers routing the Polish forces of King Stefan Batory in 1577. A German city defended by German arms, he announced smugly. Russell repeated the question he had put to the Polish postmasterwerent these stamps a little provocative? Shouldn't the civil authorities be trying to reduce the tension between their two countries, rather than using their stamps to stoke up old quarrels?
The German postmaster gave the same reply as his Polish opposite number. How, he asked, could anyone take postage stamps that seriously?
RUSSELLS TRAIN LEFT THE
He thought about the
